


Mark of Cain

by BannedBloodOranges, Rabenherz



Series: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes [6]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Caesar's Legion, Character Study, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Moment in time, Repression, Vulpes Inculta is his own warning, power struggles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:34:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22980319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BannedBloodOranges/pseuds/BannedBloodOranges, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rabenherz/pseuds/Rabenherz
Summary: In this world - the Strip, as the vermin call it - where there is every colour of sin, what other alternative have they been given?After a charged encounter with the Courier, Vulpes Inculta visits the Strip.
Relationships: Male Courier/Vulpes Inculta
Series: Smoke Gets In Your Eyes [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1628497
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	Mark of Cain

**Author's Note:**

> Non-profit fun only.
> 
> The courier referenced in this story is Rabenherz's courier, hence why they have been tagged as co-creator.

The Strip shimmers like opals in the night. Glittering, loud, unlucky. 

Crowds pass in pungent hordes, chittering women with voices husked with cigarettes and rot, men passing by with drink a disease on their breath.

Arthur's touch stings beneath his suit, the ghost press of his palm over the crease in his lap curling up into his stomach as if the courier had barbs screwed into his fingers. Sin spreads like poison, Vulpes knows, as the people swagger and spit around him. Even he, as disciplined as he is, has felt its infection.

The Legion shall pass like rain in the night. Thunder will be their gunfire, the dew on the grass the blood of the debased, the rising sun the truth they shall aspire. In this world - the Strip, as the vermin call it - where there is every colour of sin, what other alternative have they been given?

He meanders until he stands below the 38 that sticks up like a sore in the centre of the Strip. From the open doors of the surrounding casinos, there spills perfume and smoke and sweat, all tinged with the sickly tingle of vomit.

In an adjacent alleyway, there is a moan breathed out against the night, and a snicker, rugged and thick, and two figures stand into the light. A ghoul in a pinstriped suit, and on his arm, a woman of clean flesh. Makeup sits old in the growing cracks in her face, too soft skin running like faded silk into the droop of her bosom. She taps her cigarette into the gutter, twisting around to kiss the decrypt mouth of her leering companion, and Vulpes jerks his head away with a sneer.

His neck aches with the motion, a dull pang of broken skin, and he pushes back his collar with a growl. His fingertips circle the fissure of skin, feeling the print and pressure of teeth dug hard enough to bruise.

_"You'll remove it for me?"_

His fingers touch, circle, nails clawing into the juncture between head and neck, and the renewed memory chews heat into his nerves, running so hard and fast down his chest and legs he trembles like a woman. He thinks of Arthur, the bulk and smirk of him, and the constellations of caresses he has corrupted on Vulpes just by the mere brush of his hand alone. Shoulder, back, hip. Arthur is tactile in his cruelty, in his corruption of body, mind, of traitorous nerve endings that bear no loyalty to their master.

The final insult has contaminated Vulpes's mind. In the long, twisting walk between the fort and the neon glower of the Strip, their previous encounter - stripped like dogs, squabbling like whores - had itched his skin, ground his teeth into the brackets of his gums, dragged his feet and made him watch the dust rolling aimlessly onto the path that spanned and split the time between them.

Vulpes is sick. He is weak. His control has faltered.

He stares up into the burning bulbs of the Lucky 38 before he senses the incoming swell of a figure.

It's a boy, barely a man. The overhang of the neon light sharply glints in the pit of his green eyes, and his face is fanned by cherry hair. Any beauty is drained by the dig of starvation in his cheeks. 

Vulpes has been looked at before. The sufferage of surveying this pit has not been short of propositions. But this boy, with the burn of his locks, catches his breath and holds it, and in that face, there is another hunger.

Vulpes sluggishly breaks away from the bleach of the overhead light, finding his way into the press of the alley. The cool of the shade prickles the sweat on his back and brow. His chest is tight, as if under the crush of a bone vice. He slides back against the bricks, dropping his hat from his hair, and there is the boy, his hands flat on Vulpes's chest, pressing in hard and insistent.

The sugary stick of the national drink clings to the boy's lips in a flavour that Vulpes has caught sweetening the edges of Arthur's breath. The boy's hair is rough with dye, and at the roots, he can see the dark showing through. He is not surprised that at the core of the boy's laboured attempt at loveliness is a lie. 

Vulpes stands, perfectly still, in the alley where he saw the ghoul and his whore linger, but the boy does not seem deterred. He kisses across his face, the corner of his nose, the dip in his cheek where his face was caved in as a child. They are almost chaste, testing, if not for the hands shifting inside his shirt, pulling aside the lace at his throat, and the warmth of the boy's body shifts across his in a way so measured and melting that Vulpes gasps. Tiny, weak, like a woman, and the boy's lips curve at the corners.

"Relax," He whispers. He licks the end of Vulpes's nose like a kitten and his hand settles in an exact shadow of Arthur's previous, poisonous touch. Vulpes's gaze becomes heavy and he starts to stir, a warning rumble uncoiling in his diaphragm, but any threat is vanished by the boy's incoming kiss, the wet of a _tongue_ and Vulpes shudders in revulsion. His memory, a stranger to him, picks out the flick of red between the sharkish brace of Arthur's mouth, moving past his chin, his cheek, to settle on his neck, and then, right there, the boy _bites_ him.

The pain screws him right through, heat soiling the inside of his trouser and he cringes, shucking the boy to the side, who stumbles back with a snigger, and most insultingly of all, without a hint of fear.

The boy clacks his shoes on the pavement in a spiteful dance and turns to join the ramble of the crowds, Vulpes's hat tucked down over his ears.

Vulpes, his legs shaking in his spoilt trouser in the half-moon shadow of the alley, has been disloyal to himself, and by extension, to the Legion that bears his pride, his purpose. The spit of his shame marks his complacency like the brand of Cain. His weakness has bled from his skin, potent enough to have been scented by the wolves who prowl the licentious Strip. He places his palm on his hip to feel for his knife, to open his flesh as penance.

But the weight of it has gone. With it, his coins and caps.

The crowds' bustle by in streaks of sound and stink, breaking against him like a wave, and on each man, there is the stain of red hair, the flash of white thorned teeth, the arrogant swagger of the profligate.

The heat in his gut becomes bile, burning up to his throat. Like rain in the night, he imagines a cleansed morn, where the skies are black and still, the break of Hoover Dam white water through the streets.

The elderly whore laughs, high and long. She takes her lover's hand.

Vulpes stands apart, and alone.


End file.
